The Astonishing Thrill of Moving Sheep

Denny films while blocking the road behind him with a temporary fence. The sheep are just beginning to veer off course. (Photo by Danielle @Smokey House Center)

A year ago, my husband Denny and I, relocated to the north side of a mountain near the heart of Vermont’s Green Mountain Forest. Even though I’d lived further southeast in Vermont for more than 35 years, I finally felt as if I’d come home to “real” Vermont and the unspoiled minutia of an old-fashioned life.

This move has been quite an undertaking for us, (especially given that I don’t like the cold!) However, the pristine beauty of our mountain and valley is exceptional, and so are our neighbors. We have the great good fortune to live within walking distance to dairy, sheep, horse and organic vegetable farms. I greatly admire and respect my farming neighbors and hope to write about each of them. This article, however, is simply about what happens when you naively volunteer (more than once) to help move 600 plus sheep to a greener pasture.

The sheep are owned by Caleb Smith of Dorset Peak Sheep and Cattle Co. who serves as director, set manager, and clean up crew of the neighborhood sheep show. The sheep themselves become an ambulating chorus of this somewhat musical roadshow. Like a massive choir, they vocalize and move as one mostly unified entity throughout the entire production. The real stars however, are Tsuki, the Great Pyrenees guard dog, Ralph, the small herding dog, and the countless adorable lambs. Although, the director seeks to choreograph each performance, unexpected improvisation is typically the result.

An example of our successful road blocking. (Photo by Danielle @Smokey House Center)

Tsuki, the guard dog, is especially impressive. She lives fulltime with the sheep and works tirelessly day and night to protect them. With her all white coat, she seamlessly blends into them. If you don’t look closely, you’d be apt to mistake her for yet another sheep. She attends to her job as seriously and diligently as any human security detail. But on sheep moving day, she transforms herself into the parade maestro. With great pride and joy, she leads her charges to their fresh green field. The sheep line up and follow her. They are like a river. If Tsuki goes the right way, well then the entire body of sheep usually flows effortlessly to the new pasture. But if Tsuki should veer off course, well then flood waters of pandemonium are likely to follow. But without this unpredictable chaos, our show would lack its suspense and plot.

All of us human volunteers have a very simple role: we play the part of fences. During the last crucial moments, some of us block roads to oncoming traffic with net fencing or a vehicle. The rest of us line the road and hold out our arms to keep the sheep from veering off course. It sounds simple right? As fences we encourage the fast moving stream of sheep to stay within their dirt road channel. But as with any rapidly rising water, channels are often too easy to breech!

The First Sheep Moving Show

October 24, 2023

Tsuki taking a detour onto the Smokey House lawn. (Photo by Trish Bromley)

Denny calmly filmed this first extravaganza, while I was simply too enthralled to remember to snap a single photo. The event was much more captivating than I expected. Denny was too far away to capture Ralph’s impressive circling and rounding up of the widespread herd in their enormous field. But in the video below, you can clearly see Tsuki’s proud lead and how successfully we played our fence post parts. If you look closely when the camera pans to the right, you will see the sheep veering off onto the front lawn of Smokey House Center. Tsuki (perhaps due to a fragrant smell) made a bit of a detour there. My dairy farming neighbor Trish, is an animal whisperer. She speaks quietly to animals and they respond to her. Trish called to Tsuki, and Tsuki (and thus all the sheep) veered back onto the road. When the herd then flowed into their new verdant field, their happiness with the clover and grass banquet was palpable. It was an especially delectable buffet!

Caleb poses for a photo while Ralph cuddles up to Trish. (Photo by Danielle @Smokey House Center)

(Photo by Danielle @Smokey House Center)

Moving Sheep Show Take Two

November 14, 2023

The relative ease of the first production left me woefully unprepared for the second. This time Denny was at the dentist and Trish volunteered to help guide the sheep at the very end of this much longer walk. The rest of us spread out to fence the beginning transitions. Sandy (my veterinarian neighbor) and I, surmised that the sheep would be tempted to veer off into a nearby green field. So we placed ourselves at its entrance. A truck and other human fence posts blocked the road beside us.

My video of the show goes quite well for the first 8 seconds, but then it rapidly deteriorates into the chaos of an exceptionally bad home movie. Tsuki decided to slip past the truck and head down the blocked road! If all those sheep followed her, then our show would soon be nightmarishly out of control. In the video below, you hear us all unsuccessfully calling to Tsuki as she continues on her merry way down the wrong road. But then miraculously, the sheep do not follow her. (I think that those human fences next to the truck must have done an exceptionally good job!)

25 seconds into the video you hear me utter “oh well,” because who cares about Tsuki when the river of sheep keeps flowing in the right direction. But then a mere second later, I began to yell with renewed fervor because the entire river of sheep uncontrollably flooded past me into the luscious field, which I was supposedly blocking. My fence post performance and filming were a complete flop! I neglected to play my part or even hold the camera straight. However, the embarrassing video below, makes me laugh each time I view it. Hopefully, you will find redeeming humor in it too.

Sheep in the wrong field is infinitely better than sheep heading down the wrong road. Tsuki returns and Ralph rounds the herd up again. The parade continues onward as if nothing had gone amiss.

Tsuki and most of the sheep made it to their intended pasture up near Caleb’s barn, but slower sheep veered off into another delectable field alongside Caleb’s driveway. Since we were no longer on the main road, momentum slowed. Ralph took longer and was erratic when pushing these sheep towards a narrow gate. In the video below, you see Caleb directing Ralph and the show in the background. Like a dam finally giving way, the sheep flowed through the open channel and up the remainder of the driveway.

In this segment, you hear me say, “We did it!” By “we” I am not referring to myself and other human volunteers. Though we gave it our best, our role is really quite humble. I felt instead, a sense of collective accomplishment as sheep, dogs, farmer and neighbors worked together as a whole. When accompanying sheep down the road, we briefly became part of the herd and expansive landscape. There was a palpable fullness of belonging to something larger than ourselves.

The Lamb Finale

At the very beginning of the move, a dozen or so lambs panicked and instinctively ran back to their old field. Caleb needed to return to the field, catch them and bring them home. Without knowing what we were getting ourselves into, four of us neighbors volunteered to help him out. Much to our surprise, the lambs were incredibly fast, feisty and difficult to catch. We used a number of tactics to coral them into smaller spaces, but inevitably one or all of them would break out and run away again. Lamb catching felt akin to dealing with the exceptionally skillful antics of rebellious young children on a playground.

The lambs would kick like crazy when you first grabbed them. But as soon as you cradled one in your arms, it would melt into a sweet docile baby. Each baby was then hand delivered to the cab of Caleb’s truck or the backseat of Trish’s car, which had become our lamb mobile. Eventually, when all the lambs had been successfully caught, I had the joy of squishing myself into the backseat with seven of them! My childhood self (who loved petting zoos) basked in the warm glow of this pile of sleepy lambs.

Back at the farm, we carried each lamb into the field that held their herd. As we put them down, they began to cry piteously. They knew that their mothers were there, but how would they manage to find her? Caleb would give them the rest of the afternoon to reunite. Those that were unsuccessful would join a nursery of other motherless lambs that sheltered together in the barn.

Inside the “Sheep-mobile” (Photo by Cynthia Hosley)

Squishing myself in beside sleepy babies.

All summer and fall I drove by the sheep on my way home, and invariably I would pull over to watch them. For a long time, my sheep gazing and musings were a quiet and personal affair. But after the first moving show, sheep whereabouts and happenings became neighborly news that we reported on to each other.

As I wend my way home now, my eyes still instinctively scan the fields for lively animated lambs and grazing sheep. But the fallow fields cradle only round white haybales and shifting blankets of snow. The absence of sheep amplifies the vast stillness of field, mountains, sky and life.

Caleb has many excellent sheep moving videos on his Instagram page.

The Smokey House Center has photos on Instagram and Facebook, as well as a volunteer list to be notified about these kinds of opportunities.

Danielle has more beautiful photos and interesting events at her Maeflower Farms and Peppergrass Design Studio.

If you enjoyed this article, here are others that you might appreciate. The one on Our Fox Neighbors is in a similar format.